In the film ‘Atlas’ (2018) by David Nawrath, we follow the loner Walter as he attempts to avert the imminent danger his son and family suddenly find themselves in when they are threatened by a Muslim clan in Frankfurt.
Unfortunately, it is more relevant than ever.
In the film’s opening scene, we are introduced to Walter Scholl (Rainer Bock), a furniture mover and former weightlifter in his sixties, who is practising bench presses at home.
After taking a painkiller (which he washes down with water straight from the tap), he sits on the bus, half-asleep, before the next shot shows him with his colleagues; all of whom are much younger men – they are in the process of clearing out a house belonging to a tenant who has been legally declared insolvent – it does not help that the tenant desperately tries to stop the removal men.
He then staggers into his company’s warehouse carrying a massive wardrobe on his back (Bock did weight training for several months before filming began) – the reference to the titan Atlas (who, according to Greek mythology, was punished by Zeus to carry the vault of heaven on his shoulders for all eternity) is obvious.
The workers are sitting in the break room after finishing their shift when the good-natured boss, Roland Grone (Uwe Preuss), comes in and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas – and humorously reminds them of a new assignment on 27 December. Also present is the bailiff Alfred Hoppe (Thorsten Merten), a recently divorced, alcoholic and bitter man who is to ensure that the legal groundwork is in place.
We then follow Walter home. The interior there is as sparse as the protagonist himself appears to be – a simple hermit celebrating Christmas all on his own.
It turns out that the boss – in order to save the company from bankruptcy – has entered into a rather shady deal with a Muslim clan. And on the first day after Christmas, the clan leader Moussa Afsari (Roman Kanonik) arrives in a car with Roland and is – to the surprise of all the staff – introduced as a new colleague. However, it soon dawns on everyone that it is the boisterous and rather primitive Moussa who is now running the business.
The clan is actively engaged in so-called gentrification – that is to say, urban tenement blocks in working-classor low-income neighbourhoods are snapped up at a song (by force if necessary) and then refurbished – only to be resold (often at triple the profit) to a more affluent clientele.
The task of Grone’s removal firm is to clear out the flats after the original tenants have moved out – and, if necessary – to use force to remove anyone who may not have agreed to be forcibly evicted. For this latter task, they receive solid and reasonable ‘professional’ assistance from the firm’s new ‘big boss’.
For veteran manager Roland, Walter is the oldest, most dependable and most reliable employee he has; it is to Walter that he turns when there is something extra to deal with, when he needs to unburden his heart.
We get our first glimpse of Moussa’s potential for violence and lack of impulse control when he accompanies the removal men to a townhouse and is confronted there by a fearless and determined last-minute tenant, a family man and taxi driver in his thirties (Albrecht Schuch), who, together with his wife (Nina Gummich) and a five-year-old son (Karl), refuses to move.
It turns out that the drunken Alfred has failed to realise that both he and Jan have received a letter from the authorities stating that the eviction order is invalid and the removal men must therefore leave the premises without having carried out their work.
This puts the manager in a difficult position – he has agreed with Moussa that the building must be vacated by New Year.
Walter thinks he recognises the young family man – and that it is his son Jan, whom he abandoned when the boy was small and with whom he has had no contact since.
And here we come to the film’s central narrative: a father-son story set in motion by a mere coincidence.
Poor Alfred is, in fact, the only person Walter spends any time with – they often have a beer or two (far more, in Alfred’s case) at a nearby pub.
In their relationship, it is Alfred who does the talking, whilst the reserved and very quiet Walter listens. But in a key scene at the pub table, he mumbles that ‘Everyone is responsible for themselves. Everyone bears their own burden. And everyone must bear it alone’. This is likely his own motto in life that he is describing here.
When Walter wonders how Moussa can behave as brutally as he does, Alfred replies laconically: ‘Because he’s an Afsari’. And he goes on to explain the theme further (I won’t give anything away here).
The encounter with his (unaware) son plunges Walter into a conflict of loyalty. Whom should he choose to support? His boss, or his son and his family?
He initially chooses a happy medium. Parking on the street outside where his son and family live, he spots two youths who are about to vandalise Jan’s taxi (obviously a paid job), sees Jan come running out and catch one of them, and resolutely gets out of the car himself to deal with the other; however, the latter throws a paving stone at Walter, inflicting a bleeding wound. Little Karl comes out onto the steps – he calls out in fear for his father, and Jan immediately rushes over to comfort him, allowing both hooligans to make their escape.
When Jan thanks Walter for his help, he notices the blood and tries to persuade Walter to come inside with him to have the wound looked at – his wife is a nurse. But Walter says no; he changes his mind the next day, buys a present for Karl and is invited in for dinner.
The following day he turns up there again; he knows that Jan is home alone, and they have a conversation on a central theme (including ‘paternal responsibility’), in which Walter’s contributions initially consist of statements laden with subtext, before he finally reveals that he actually works for the company that wants to evict them. This also allows him to explain just how much danger the family is actually in.
The plot then masterfully balances Walter’s cautious approach to his son, daughter-in-law and grandson, the tension arising in Walter’s relationship with his boss, the increasingly risky connection he forges with the Muslim clan leader Moussa, and the conflict that arises between Jan and the Muslim clan, who resort to ever harsher measures to have the small family removed.
In the second half of the film, the theme of ‘the lone individual against the many’ takes on an increasingly dramatic tone, focusing on Walter’s struggle against the unscrupulous Roman.
At the same time, we are treated to an interesting scene set in a hospital (where his daughter-in-law Julia works) and flashbacks to a boat trip Walter and Jan took when his son was the same age as his grandson is now – this scene also gives the viewer/us a hint that is confirmed right at the end of the film.
I’ll leave it to the readers themselves to discover how the story unfolds. I highly recommend this cinematic epic. The film is subtitled in English.
It can also be rented via Amazon Prime for just over fifty kroner.
The veteran Rainer Bock – a classic character actor* – takes on his first leading role here (after a long string of nearly 100 supporting roles). And he portrays the protagonist – the quiet but stoic transport company employee Walter Scholl – with brilliance and panache.
For his performance, Bock was nominated for the ‘Deutscher Filmpreis 2019’ and received the ‘Deutscher Schauspielpreis 2019’ for Best Leading Actor.
Uwe Preuss, Thorsten Merten and Albrecht Schuch (who, amongst other things, played one of the leading roles in Thomas Berger’s epic war film from 2022: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’) and Moussa Afsari all deliver strong performances (although the latter’s role was labelled ‘one-dimensional’ by some critics, which was perhaps not entirely unexpected …).
Director David Nawrath made his feature film directorial debut with ‘Atlas’. He also co-wrote the screenplay (with Paul Salisbury) and was nominated for the German Screenplay Award for the script. ‘Atlas’ was nominated for the ‘Deutscher Filmpreis 2019’.
* From a Norwegian perspective, Bock’s role as Stasi agent Hugo in the outstanding Norwegian-German production ‘Zwei Leben’ (which premiered in Norway in 2012, and in Germany the following year) is the most interesting.
The film is set in Norway (with the idyllic cluster farmstead of Havråtunet on Osterøya playing a central role); the story centres on one of the approximately 250 ‘Lebensborn’ children (out of a total of around 11,000 so-called ‘German children’ who were born and raised in the SS-organised Lebensborn children’s homes around the country) who, between 1943 and the end of the war, were deported to Germany, mainly to Saxony.
The lead roles are played by Julianne Köhler (who learnt Norwegian for the part!), Sven Nordin and Liv Ullmann.
The film was nominated by the German jury for an Oscar in the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category, and it received a number of awards across the West.
As a point of interest, it is worth noting that we are also presented with a ‘plausible’ identification of the mysterious ‘Isdalen woman’, who was found murdered in Isdalen in Bergen in November 1970.
